k to Mrs. Candy.

So it was with no notion of Matilda's intention that her aunt that
Sunday took her seat in Mr. Richmond's church. She had heard that a
number of people, most of them young people, were to be baptized in the
evening; she had been to her own church duly in the morning, and
thought she might gratify her curiosity now in seeing how these things
are managed in a different communion. She and Clarissa went alone, not
supposing that the younger ones of the family were at that same moment
getting ready to follow.

"How are you going to dress yourself, Matilda?" her sister inquired.

"To dress myself!" said Matilda, turning her eyes upon her sister in
astonished fashion.

"Why, yes, child! you will go out there in sight of everybody, you
know. Aren't you going to put on a white frock? Clarissa says they
always do in 'her church.'"

Matilda looked down at her own black dress and burst into tears; only
by a vigorous effort she kept the tears from falling, after the first
one or two, and hurriedly and silently began to get herself ready.

"But, Matilda! why don't you speak?" said her sister. "Are you going
just so? and why don't you speak to me? There is no harm in a white
frock."

"I don't want a white frock," said Matilda. "Do _you_ mean to stay at
home?"

"I suppose I am going," said Maria, beginning slowly her own
preparations. "People would think odd if I didn't go. Where are you
going to sit?"

"What do you mean?"

"Why, you are very stupid. I mean, where are you going to sit?"

"Where we always do, I suppose."

"But then you would have so far to walk."

"To walk?" Matilda repeated, bewildered.

"Why, yes, child! When you are called to go up with the rest, you know;
you would have so far to go."

"Oh!" said Matilda. "What of it?"

"Don't you care?"

"Why, no. It don't make any difference."

"Well, I'd have a white frock if I were you," said Maria. "Being in
black is no objection to that; for people do just the same, Matilda,
for a baptism."

"You will be late, Maria," was all the answer her little sister made.

And they were late. Matilda was ready and waiting, before Maria's slow
preparations were made. They walked quick; but service had begun in the
church before they got there. They paused in the vestibule till a
prayer should be ended. And here Matilda was seized upon.

"I thought you were not coming," said an earnest whisper. "What made
you come so late?" It was Norton Laval.